I bought it as a kit. But used to work repair and upgrading machinery like this all the time, from little service station thermal printers, through supermarket tills, PC servers, monitors, up to line printers barreling out thousands of lines a minute and computer hardware with CPU's "chips" over 30kgs. So it's not like the work is unfamiliar or that I'm not up to fine accurate detail.
But that's why I'm asking if _others_ have done constructive stuff - because if no-one else can get one into productive service, then it's not just me. So rather than drop cowardly slights, if you've done some constructive bravely put your hand up and say "I printed a XYZ" using these settings, this software.
I also have purchased a pre-assembled head 0.3mm that managed to do a test print of a cylinder, 16mm dia, 25mm high, then on the next print a 6mm dia 80mm shaft, it started playing up and hasn't managed to get above third layer since.
But there do seem to be some physical issues - the constant need to re-level (yes I have checked and tightened the Z drive) but it's that it goes off level - I'm assuming because it's a thermally flexing plane fixed at three points without compensation. the three point fix is not good, as it creates lines of fulcrum, yet has no stable counter forces. But it could be that - or it could be the method the hot ends are mounted into the PLA carriage. I know I had a big problem with having no dimension (or tolerances) for the extrusion nozzle, so going tri-colour without some sort of lifting technology was always going to be challenging. (personally I'd try some heat expanding meta-material in the form of a spring, so that when the nozzle came off standby temperature the nozzle would extend 0.5-1.0mm which should give a big benefit.) Likewise a sensor that could be used to read the Z differences, for correction (within tolerance) or warning to reset bed level (out of tolerance) that shouldn't be a particularly big challenge.
The support I've had from RepRapPro has been great, but. I can't keep email them every few minutes. But I'm looking through the site and the support materials, and they're fragmented. Like the old HAM days, stealing parts out of TV's and radios. but without the manuals.
Take the sticking issue - it's got to be the most common thing reported - but where is a list of symptom descriptions and solutions. where is the information that tells me what is going to happen if I lift the bed temp or drop it and what to look for? Or what happens with the output by doing certain things to the hotend.
Personally I'd like to see each roll of filament come with a small graph indicating that batches' glass temperatures, and it's adhesion strength and viscosity at those temperature (two plots on graph, w/ abscissas of temperature). this would help enormously rather than having to guess and reset each time.
I have a sneaky suspicion that my problems stem from using 1.75mm PLA in a standard Mendel Bowden (lack of "piston" action in extrusion pool). But as I haven't had much success with anything (a handful of calibration pieces that eventually came out ok, if "hairy") and some gears (which suffer from first layer distortion). So it's hard to diagnose a fault pattern when I can't get a consistent base print.
One print I've trying to do as test run is this one [
www.thingiverse.com] but this part " 1 assem_baulk_holed.stl " for example just comes out as faint random segments on the bed...which are then pushed around by the head until they make a spaghetti mess.
I got the tri-material because I hope to be doing two colour (or colour + clear, or colour and black) and also use recycled PLA as infill (as its not so colour sensitive) because I have one of these : [
www.kickstarter.com] However getting lumpy objects into a pellet form is proving yet another hurdle - thinking melting to sheets then sticking them in a blender, like the HDPE blender guy did on the Instructables for his plastic lathe stock.
I'm hoping to step up to some ABS once I've got repetition on the PLA prints. But I'm puzzled how a PLA printed mounting bracket will handle the ABS temperatures, so I'm wanting to print a full set of parts before going dowen that roda.
Yet none of that helps me get my actually project that I'm supposed to be working on, off my workbenches